After the recent foreclosure of my neighbor’s home and picking up her life from her front lawn, I started to think about what is going to happen to all my “stuff” when I am gone. I don’t have children. Who is going to have to deal with this??? This compelled me to start cleaning out those closets and figure it out. It seemed that the more I piled up, the deeper the question of what REALLY happens to the stuff emerged.

I made my piles- electronics, clothes to donate, clothes and items to try to sell, clothing that needs to be recycled, stuff that has no future of any kind.

• Electronics were easier than I thought. Put a request on social media and got some feedback. Looked into the companies and what they did with the items. Felt good about this cleansing.
• Clothes to donate follows the same rule as a previous post about which thrift stores at which you shop: Do their share your same values? If so, you got your place.
• Clothing and items to sell- well, this is going to be an adventure. I am borrowing a dress form from a friend and plan to take photos of clothing. Hopefully, I will try to do this on my own and make a little change. I also ordered a bag from thredUP. You can send your clothes to them to sell…but if they don’t sell in 14 days, they make all the money off the sale (if and when it happens).

Here’s the one that  is bugging me: Recycling clothing. I want to do it, but what does that even mean? I looked online to see where I could go to recycle clothes. There was one organization in my city that does it. It is an organization with which I don’t share values. Deep sigh. I figured, if they are recycling clothes, it is okay. I go to the organization with two bags. I walk in with one of the two bags and this man grabs it…I mean GRABS it. I asked if they recycle the clothing and he said, “Nope. They just ship it overseas.” My gut said to get out of there. I could not get the bag back, but I did keep the other one and left with a sinking feeling. Back to the interwebs…

According to Slate, “the secondhand clothing industry has been export-oriented almost since the introduction of mass-produced gar­ments. And by one estimate, used clothing is now the United States’ number one export by volume, with the overwhelming majority sent to ports in sub-Saharan Africa.” So these clothes get baled and sent over. They are picked through again, and then what?

There is the argument that this creates jobs in other countries, but some reports say this is affecting established textile businesses in those countries. See what I mean- total rabbit hole, y’all. What we do know is that whoever is sending the clothes gets paid (now I want my bag back).

Speaking of arguments, some say at least the clothes are not going straight to landfills. I mean, I feel as though once they are picked through they ultimately end up in a landfill…just in another country. This is not recycling, is it?

I am searching for an organization to truly recycle clothing. Not send them off somewhere, but recycle them. My co-worker told me she was shopping at H&M (another deep sigh) and they announced they were recycling clothing during the month of April for Earth Month. After this recent experience with the bag grabber, I thought that they probably just ship it off like the others. Nope. Check this out:

Once the old garments have been dropped off in a store, our partner I:CO collects and sort them into three categories:

• Rewear – clothing that can be worn again will be sold as second hand clothes.
• Reuse – old clothes and textiles will be turned into other products, such as cleaning cloths.
• Recycle – everything else is turned into textile fibres, and used for things like insulation.

Currently, one single garment can contain up to 20% recycled fibres (recycled cotton or recycled wool from collected garments) without any loss of quality or durability. We are working to get that number to increase by creating demand and investing directly in technological innovation. The first step is to minimise the risks of fashion going to landfills – we believe our clothes deserve better! In the long term, we want to find the technological solutions needed to be able to fully reuse and recycle all textile fibre. When using other recycled material (blended or pure) such as recycled polyester, a garment can already now be made of 100% recycled material.

So, I have a plan this weekend. I’m going to H&M. Never thought I would hear myself say those words. No shopping, just recycling.

“And it’s teal!”